What are your Clever Subversions of Common Tropes? #1

today's video is sponsored by campfire blaze brian von va here back at it again with another question for you dnd players and dms out there in the world today what are your clever subversions of common tropes part one to start the campaign the party begins in a tavern but they're not meeting for the first time they're recounting the story of their adventures to the bar keeper so in the course of normal play as the gm i'll use the past tense you then came to a sealed door and stopped to consider how to proceed when the party is rolling they say what they did as if it happened if the dice don't agree everybody gets a chance to correct the story for this hypothetical bar keeper i swung my axe right into this goblin's eye rolls in that one nah remember that was the part where you hit yourself in the eye i see that concussion never went away it has the added bonus of pushing everyone together to see how it was that they started humbly as adventurers accepting a single job to being the best of friends reflecting on a lifetime of adventures together so what are your clever inversions of common tropes whether they're meant to foster good table dynamics or just something clever monster plot hook you thought up that other tables might appreciate having a hard time planning out your next tabletop session and needs some way to keep organized campfire blaze is here to help blaze is a browser-based flexible suite of tools that helps keep your campaign organized you can edit character sheets in real time to keep track of any and all changes create articles for easy world building character sheets even design branching timelines to keep one step ahead of your table regardless of how wild and crazy their choices get given blaze's flexibility and modular approach you can pay for the tools you need and keep them forever alternatively you can build your own subscription and just pay for the features you want you can add modules for as little as 50 cents or go for the whole bundle and pay for a few bucks a month with a 30-day return policy if you're a dm who just wants to keep your stories organized and give your players real-time updates on the fly campfire blaze is for you better faster and safer blazes the visual ttrpg software organizer you deserve check the link out in the description below for more information my players really wanted to try an evil campaign i've let them be evil characters before but never the whole party it sounded like a fine idea to me but i had a twist in mind i simply make the world more evil than them racism corruption and dirty dealings were rampant everywhere the moment their kobold hirelings faced discrimination in a town the party just froze talked briefly and resolved to conquer the kingdom and put an end to the injustice they made perhaps the most lawful good party ever from a group that went around harvesting and trading souls of their enemies i made a bar with two grim dark loner types sitting in the corner when the party tries to approach one it won't respond if they try to tap it it falls over and shows it as just a bunch of bottles or flagons stacked up with a cloak over the top i'm dming 5th edition for a bunch of first time players so of course i send them on the skeletons or attacking the village out of season which is weird because they normally only attack in winter quest after smashing the heads of like 30 skeletons they enter a room with 20 plus skeletons and a ghost in it of course these level 3 characters try to talk their way out of it and figure out what will put the ghost to rest turns out she wanted to be the ultimate bronze age chef so then it turned into a cooking competition between our dwarf paladin and the ghost with ability checks for every part of the food prep process i even had some of them on the judging committee one of whom rolled a nat one to like the food he gave the most scathing review i've ever heard i'm talking gordon ramsay level destruction the paladin had to roll an ego check and failed so he lost his proficiency in cooking from being so demoralized but in the end the ghost won and was put to rest and the skeletons resumed miling about without a master and everyone lived happily ever after the end my party was traveling with a wagon through a forest road when they came across a tree falling in their path instantly they were all in high alert they described setting up a defensive position using both the wagon and the fallen tree and sent the rogue to scout into the woods for the inevitable ambush it was uh just a tree i just wanted to give the barbarian fighter a non-combat skill check slash role play opportunity i don't know where i first heard this idea but i love using it you go to an inn called many corners the ground floor is a third-sided boxy shape creating tons of shadowy alcoves and corners for mysterious loners to sit in when you enter the tavern almost all of them are filled and most of the tables in the center of the room are empty fifth edition dm i have a city where the weather is optimal rain for crops but beautiful weather year around snowy in the winters but never a blizzard sunny breezy warm days in the summer the city is clearly magic as if by divine intervention but really there's just an adult silver dragon running the city's bank fourth edition evil player instead of a cult-worshipping teammate evil dragon goddess of vengeance and greed the church props her up as providing succor to the poor while casting down the financial elite they've run a really great pr campaign for her i once had a 10 foot by 10 foot cupboard in a dungeon that had a single orc and a chest in it the chest was empty the orc wasn't actually alive and the entire room was actually filled with a gelatinous cube that paralyzed and digested anyone who entered without noticing it i once had a party come across two halflings that were being chased by revenants for their magical ring the halflings got killed and the revenants went away i started my party stumbling on a tavern after being lost in the woods when they walked in there was a steady level of generic crowd banter but there were no clear words and it seemed to be coming from the air rather than people in the bar a pc put their hand on the bar keeper's shoulder and it stuck turns out there was a mad wizard in the area unleashing bizarre spells and inducing gigantism on local monsters they'd stumble into the mouth of a gigantic mimic they still don't trust inns and a few even roll contracts to see if their characters can muster up the will to walk into them farmer necromancer used necromancy to get his deadbeat family to help with the yearly turnip harvest as he was too old to do it himself not particularly evil but not particularly good would just dig up the family every now and then to help him around the house before putting them back to rest i traditionally gm horror games yes so i'm very well versed in creating mystery subversion is a cousin of mystery so when i dm i definitely try to surprise my players often this is in the form of characters who subvert the usual bevy of stereotypes an aged orc real estate agent and a mimic historian with a collection of random antiques and a bad memory are probably two of my favorites i love traditional evil races just being people without any land to call their own who have to resort to raiding to survive i had a first time player who once used the 50 gold pieces she had on her first level fighter to buy the goblin band that they were asked to get rid of some resources so they wouldn't attack and then had them as a tag-along caravan that rode with them until they were rich enough to outright buy some land for them to settle i love doing elves as extremely aggressive insular people who are terrified of foreigners and extremely brutal and territorial the kind of thing where someone stepping foot on their forest is met with that person's entire town being raised to the ground in the night though people rightly argue that it's not a trope i do dwarves as socialists very often with a colony hive mind kind of idea but with a really fluid and short hierarchy i love the idea of magic as an inherently evil thing 7th c touched on that idea a lot and i've liked it being a sub theme start the game in a tavern an evil presence is threatening the surrounding region and they need to stop it everyone groans barkeep becomes a well-known friend over the course of the next several sessions as he offers free rooms and drinks for each great story they come back with over the course of the campaign it seems like the big bad evil guy is always one step ahead of the heroes he's always prepared he knows exactly what to use when and where the players are starting to get paranoid some claim the dm is just out to get them and then they finally figure it out the barkeep was the big bad evil guy all along and they've been telling him their stories their secrets and their plans one thing i'm doing for my current campaign the group has learned that the owner of the local lumber mill is a jerk to his employees long hours hard work low pay he also sneaks out of town for a few days around the full moon so some people believe him to be a lycanthrope when the party investigates they will find that the rumors are wrong he's not a lycanthrope he's just divorced and only able to see his daughter once a month also he is treating his workers fairly they're just a bunch of whiners we arrived in a decent sized village we could tell something shifty was going on but not put our fingers on what after some investigation we realize all the children under 16 are missing upon further investigation we find rumors of a cult run by gnomes and some major ritual we also find the children are being held in a schoolhouse on the outskirts of town what ends up happening is a pitched battle outside the schoolhouse which gets sets on fire thank you wizard's ball of flame the gnomes are defeated or at least we assume that they are as they leave some humans who are initially fighting us with the gnomes help us rescue the children from the burning building we turn around congratulating each other on rescuing the children and to see the town is gone all the people all the buildings dust the ritual is not using the children it was using the town the children were being kept safe while the town was sacrificed we felt so guilty we had to escort those children to the next major center with an orphanage that sequence we fondly called our chain of dogs the big bad evil guy is the most vile thing to ever walk the planes of existence ground corruption level of evil he goes around saving kingdoms slaying lich kings and liberating the people i do want to end all existence that is true but first i will cleanse the world of all evils so that i may be the only force standing in the way of good the big bad evil guy wants to destroy every force of evil just so he can be the only evil thing everywhere the last campaign i ran the bbeg were a bunch of orcs with aqua buses in helmets with a metal crest along the top practicing manifest destiny on the lesser races the players didn't understand my thinking until like the third or fourth to the last session when the warlock finally said we are at the ass end of a cultural exchange and everything we know and love is going to die thanks renegade geophysicist now i'm sad about the indians the elves were also re-skinned mongols huns but that didn't get as explored as i would have liked i was hoping to do a style con assassination but it ended up happening off screen as it were as they just paid some people to do it a more general trope i really feel the need to invent is money one gold piece per day for living nicely means that 300 gold piece per year is like owning landed serif's money so a sword costing 300 gold pieces makes sense but gaining 50 gold peas from a village for killing rats no way i kept prices the same by and large and cut rewards by 90 money was more important than hit points and the only way for players to get rich is to do something really worthwhile that nets them an income or land capitalism in the 21st century was a helpful resource for that once again this video was sponsored by campfire blaze if you're a dm you really need to check them out asap so you can get your campaign nice and organized that said if you liked today's vid make sure to like and subscribe as well as ring that bell follow mr ripper on his twitter join the group finder discord and go over to r slash mr ripper if you want to submit a story of your very own for us to read live or in a vid like this and using a help action you can always click my big blue face to come follow me brian von va as i show you the world of voice acting and gaming as well and thank you so very much for all the love and kindness throughout the year i've been working for mr ripper the only positive thing i can say to all of you right now from the bottom of my heart and with tears in my eyes being held back is that i have a great job now because of you guys and gals and the fact that you like listening to me talking and rambling so i appreciate all of you and i truly hope i can bring you more joy as the world gets a little bit weirder and more chaotic i just want to bring some heart love to your hearts and and yeah it's going to get better and better and the world will clean up and i'll be here when it does to keep entertaining you so all the love see you next time bye for now

Channel: MrRipper

Views: 32,926

Keywords: DnDStories, DnD, DungeonsAndDragons, dnd stories, dungeons and dragons, ask reddit, dungeons & dragons, askreddit top posts, reddit stories, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd stories reddit, dungeon master, dnd campaigns, dm tips 5e, dungeons and dragons online, best of reddit, dungeons and dragons cartoon, dungeons & dragons florida edition, gm tips, role playing game, askreddit funny, d&d beyond, reddit funny, critical role, d&d 5e, rolling stats

Id: zBsRWW9bNiY

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020